ALBRITTON v. CITY OF WINONA.
No. 33074.
Supreme Court of Mississippi
Feb. 7, 1938.
178 So. 799
(In Banc.)
Smith, C. J., delivered the opinion of the court.
This is an appeal from a decree validating a proposed issue by the appellee of serial bonds aggregating $35,000 rendered in a proceeding authorized for that purpose by section 313, Code 1930. The bonds are to be issued under chapter 1, Laws of First Extraordinary Session of 1936, and the appellant‘s claim is that the provision of the statute authorizing the levy of taxes for the payment of the bonds violates the due process of law provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution and of section 14 of our State Constitution, and also that it violates sections 17, 183, and 258 of our State Constitution.
The preamble to the statute sets forth the reason for the enactment of the statute and the purposes sought to be accomplished by it, which preamble, together with section 1 of the statute, the reporter will set forth in full. The statute then creates the Mississippi Industrial Commission and charges it with certain duties, section 2 et seq., among which are to make effective the “declared public policy of this state to balance agriculture with industry, and for that purpose is hereby authorized and empowered to determine, under the provisions of this act, whether the public convenience and necessity require that any municipality shall have the right to acquire lands and thereon to erect industrial enterprises and to operate them and to dispose of such lands and industrial enterprises.” Section 7. To this end it is authorized, when requested by a municipality, to investigate and determine, in the manner provided by the statute, whether the public convenience and necessity require that the municipality be authorized “to acquire,
When so authorized by the commission, a municipality may issue serial bonds, with the approval of two-thirds of its qualified electors. The commission “shall determine the amount of taxes necessary to be levied and collected annually to retire the bonds and pay interest coupons and to create a sinking fund for the payment of said bonds and interest so that the annual tax levy shall be uniform throughout the period for which the bonds are issued,” section 14, which annual tax the municipality must levy. Section 18 of the act provides that “all income from any lease or contract for the operation or from the disposition of said industrial enterprise shall be paid into the bond sinking fund provided for the bonds issued under the provisions of this act for the retirement of said bonds and the interest thereon, and such income or proceeds shall not be used by the municipality for any other purpose except as to disposition of surplus income authorized above, and shall be subject to all of the provisions hereof relative to said sinking fund.”
Another order was made by the commission reciting that the municipal officers of the City of Winona “are not presently suitable, competent, or fit persons to direct and control the operations of said industrial enterprise, but for the best municipal public interests and welfare said enterprise should be operated under lease or contract for the general municipal welfare by some private individual, firm or corporation, which said contract, however, must be approved by this Commission under provisions of said Mississippi Industrial Act, before the same is effective.”
The discussion of the questions here presented may be well begun by setting forth certain fundamental and accepted principles that underlie the American theory of government, in the light of which this case must be decided.
1. The purpose for which the state exists is to promote the welfare of its citizens—their peace, happiness, and prosperity.
2. The government is the state’s agent, created by its Constitution and charged thereby with the duty of accomplishing this purpose, which duty rests with equal force on each of the departments into which the government is separated—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.
3. The legislative department is primarily charged with the duty of determining by what means this purpose can be accomplished. To that end it is invested, by
4. Upon the judicial department, because of the nature of its duties, devolves the duty of determining whether in specific instances the other two departments have exceeded the powers granted to them by the Constitution.
5. In determining whether an act of the Legislature violates the Constitution, the courts are without the right to substitute their judgment for that of the Legislature as to the wisdom and policy of the act and must enforce it, unless it appears beyond all reasonable doubt to violate the Constitution. “Nor are the courts at liberty to declare an Act [of the legislature] void, because in their opinion it is opposed to a spirit supposed to pervade the Constitution, but not expressed in words.” 1 Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (8 Ed.), at page 351, quoted with approval in Mississippi State Tax Commission v. Flora Drug Co., 167 Miss. 1, at page 20, 148 So. 373, at page 376.
With this preface we come to the specific questions presented for consideration, which will be disposed of seriatim.
The state’s taxing power can be resorted to only for a constitutionally valid public or governmental purpose, so that the question here is whether the purpose for which the tax is to be levied is constitutionally valid.
1. Due Process of Law. The vague and general phrase “due process of law” is not defined by the Constitution, consequently the courts have been compelled to develop its concept and content—to say what it means. Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S. 97, 24 L. Ed. 616. In the course of so doing they have expanded it beyond its literal meaning of “due procedure” and have brought within it substantive as well as procedural rights. Cf. Brandeis and Holmes, JJ., in Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, page 373, 47 S. Ct. 641, 647, 71 L. Ed. 1095, and
Chapter 1, Laws of First Extraordinary Session of 1936, seeks to promote the public welfare (1) by providing an opportunity for laboring men to obtain employment, without which a large number of them would be without an opportunity to earn a livelihood; (2) to provide means for the processing of the natural resources and agricultural products of the state, for want of which these products are being carried beyond the borders of the state for processing, to the detriment of its citizens; and (3) to promote agriculture. The economic condition which here confronted the Legislature was this: (1) Thousands of our citizens, throughout the state, who are dependent on manual labor for a livelihood were without employment, and under the state’s then economic and industrial setup would probably continue indefinitely so to be; and (2) agriculture, from which most of the state’s citizens, either directly or indirectly, derive a livelihood, was at a low ebb with nothing to indicate that it would not indefinitely so continue. The care of the poor, the
The ownership by municipalities of business enterprises that are usually designated as public utilities has long been recognized as valid, but the enterprise here is not within that category and belongs to the class usually owned and operated by private individuals. That fact is not an insuperable obstacle, for the state and its subdivisions have long been permitted to engage in such enterprises, provided the public interest requires. Jones v. Portland, and Green v. Frazier, supra. This state owns a very large farm on which it produces and sells a large quantity of cotton and other crops—a business usually engaged in by private individuals—the necessity and, therefore, the justification therefor being to give its convicts employment. But the validity of the exercise of the taxing power does not rest alone on necessity, as Judge Cooley has admonished us in People v. Township of Salem, 20 Mich. 452, 4 Am. Rep. 400, where in holding that taxes can be levied only for public purposes
Manufacturing enterprises, as all will agree, will tend to relieve unemployment and both directly and indirectly furnish markets for agricultural and other products. This state, in comparison with others, has few such enterprises, and it has long sought in vain to procure them by offering them special inducements, e. g., exemption from taxation. The Legislature has determined that the public interest, as set forth in the preamble to the statute, requires the adoption of another method for procuring them, to-wit, municipal ownership in whole or in part thereof. The method thus adopted undoubtedly has a reasonable relation to the purpose sought to be accomplished, and whether it is so far beyond the necessity of the case as to be merely an arbitrary exercise
But it is said, in effect, that the engaging by a state, or its political subdivisions, in manufacturing enterprises, is a complete departure from the concept our forefathers had of the powers and duties of the state and is a step towards socialism. This ambiguous and ill-defined word, which is given an “exceedingly wide range of specific connotations,” according to the use desired to be made of it, came first into use in its modern sense in 1827. 14 Ency. of The Social Sciences, 188. Every intervention of any consequence by the state and national governments in the economic and social life of the citizen has been so branded, beginning in the latter part of the last century with governmental control and regulation of industries usually owned and operated by private individuals and which have come to be recognized as public utilities. We must not permit ourselves to be subjected to the tyranny of symbols. The due process of law provisions of our constitutions do not enact Adam Smith’s concept of the negative state, one of the main functions of which would be to stand aloof from intervention in the social and economic life of its citi
Again it is said that, if the state and its subdivisions can own and operate a manufacturing enterprise, it can then take over and operate every business and industry, thereby bringing all its citizens into direct dependence on the state. This, of course, under due process of law could not be done, for the liberty of the citizen to acquire, own, and use private property cannot thereunder be destroyed or arbitrarily interfered with. The statute here under consideration does not create a state of municipal monopoly nor interfere with the right of individuals to engage in the business of manufacturing raw materials into finished products. The due process clauses of our constitutions must not be construed so as to put the state and federal governments into a strait-jacket and prevent them from adapting life to the continuous change in social and economic conditions. That the framers of our constitutions may not have visualized
We must never forget that, in the words of John Marshall, a constitution is “intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs. To have prescribed the means by which government should, in all future time, execute its powers, would have been to change, entirely, the character of the instrument, and give it the properties of a legal code. It would have been an unwise attempt to provide, by immutable rules, for exigencies which, if foreseen at all, must have been seen dimly, and which can be best provided for as they occur.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 415, 4 L. Ed. 579. While the Federal Constitution was in process of adoption by the states, Alexander Hamilton, in No. 32 of the Federalist, said: “We are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity; constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a capacity to provide
Growth is the life of the law, and when it ceases to grow and to keep pace with social and economic needs it becomes a hindrance instead of an aid to the public welfare. Cf. Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366, 18 S. Ct. 383, 42 L. Ed. 780; Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 4 S. Ct. 111, 292, 28 L. Ed. 232; Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S. 22, 25 L. Ed. 989; Hutcheson, Law as Liberator, page 113 et seq., and Hutcheson, “The Common Law of the Constitution,” 15 Texas Law Review, page 329 et seq. We must not be influenced by vague notions of natural law, nor decide due process of law cases in accordance with our own particular economic theories—by what Dean Pound designates as “an idealized political picture of the existing social order.” The Theory of Judicial Decision, 36 Harvard Law Review, 641, 656. So to do would frequently result in deciding cases “upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain” (Holmes, J., in Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75, 25 S. Ct. 539, 546, 49 L. Ed. 937, 949, 3 Ann. Cas. 1133), “prevent the making of social experiments that an important part of the community desires” (Holmes, J., in Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U. S. 312, 344, 42 S. Ct. 124, 134, 66 L. Ed. 254, 268, 27 A. L. R. 375), and in the “exercise of the powers of a super-Legislature—not the performance of the constitutional function of judicial review” (Brandeis, J., in Jay Burns Baking Co. v. Bryan, 264 U. S. 504, 534, 44 S. Ct. 412, 421, 68 L. Ed. 813, 836, 32 A. L. R. 661). In the oft-quoted language of Mr. Justice Holmes, “The
Cases from other jurisdictions may be cited holding statutes somewhat similar to the one here under consideration invalid under due process, but cases holding such a statute valid thereunder may also be cited. We will not pause to discuss these cases, with one exception that will hereinafter appear, for the reason that they were decided (1) on social and economic facts from which we must draw our own conclusions (West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, supra); (2) under the social and economic conditions then existing, which conditions are ever changing and each case must be decided on the social and economic conditions that exist when the statute was enacted or, probably, at the time the case is decided; and (3) under social and economic theories which are no longer universally entertained. Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, supra; West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, supra; Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 24 L. Ed. 77; German Alliance Ins. Co. v. Lewis, 233 U. S. 389, 34 S. Ct. 612, 58 L. Ed. 1011, L. R. A. 1915C, 1189; Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365, 47 S. Ct. 114, 71 L. Ed. 303, 54 A. L. R. 1016; Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 31 S. Ct. 186, 55 L. Ed. 112, 32 L. R. A. (N. S.), 1062, Ann. Cas. 1912A, 487; Brotherhood of Railway, etc., Clerks v. Texas & N. O. R. Co., D. C., 24 F. (2d) 426.
In Green v. Frazier, supra, the Supreme Court of the United States had under consideration several North Dakota statutes providing for the establishment and operation of a bank, the entire capital stock of which should be state owned; the acquisition, ownership, and operation by the state of plants for the manufacture of farm products, and warehouses, elevators, flour mills, factories, plants, machinery, and equipment therefor, all to be operated under the name of the North Dakota Mill & Elevator Association; and the establishment of a state owned
The tax, of which complaint is here made, is to be levied, however, not for the acquisition and operation by a municipality of a manufacturing enterprise, but for the purchase of land and construction of a building thereon to be leased to individuals or private corporations. If the statute permits a lease of the property that would strip it of the purpose for which the statute permits its acquisition, as hereinbefore outlined, and permitted it to be devoted wholly to private purposes, the tax to be levied in order to pay the bonds, by the sale of which the money for purchasing the property is to be obtained, would then not be for a public purpose but in aid of private individuals, which under due process of law cannot be done. The statute does not so permit, for in all its
The lease, therefore, must be of such character as will insure the continued operation of the proposed industry with power in the municipality, under the supervision and control of the Mississippi Industrial Commission, to enforce the continued operation; in other words, the character of the lease is to be such as, in effect, to constitute the lessee the municipality’s agent for operating the industry without liability on the municipality to others growing thereout. “If the end be public, it matters not that it is attained through a private channel.” 1 Hares American Constitutional Law, page 286.
In Brown v. Beatty, supra, wherein the right of the Legislature to confer upon a railroad the right of eminent domain was upheld, the court said: “Where such enterprises are engaged in by individuals under charters of incorporation, they are not the less undertakings in which the public have an interest. They are public works, intended to promote the interests of the community. The individual corporators, in the anticipated pecuniary benefit which may result to them, have an object and an interest distinct from that of the public. In that respect the enterprise is individual, and the corporation private. But the object and purpose of the incorporation are the public advantage. This gives to the work its public character. A corporation created by the legislature with a view to the construction of a work of public utility, is the agency or means by which its intentions are designed to be carried into effect.” A municipality having the right to provide for the lighting of its streets may appoint an electric light company as its
The statute does not specifically prescribe the terms of this lease, but follows the usual course of leaving that to the public officers charged with the duty of carrying out the purposes of the statute, e. g., section 2455, Code 1930. We are not called on, and are without authority, to here specifically set forth and limit the provisions of such leases, and we must presume that the municipal officers and the Mississippi Industrial Commission will take care that the provisions of the leases will meet the requirements of the statute. If they do not, the leases will be void. It may not be amiss, however, to say that one effectual method for preventing the lessee from holding the property without carrying out the purposes for which it was acquired would be to insert in the lease a clause setting forth the character and capacity of the proposed industry, and providing for the termination of the lease if the lessee fails within a specified time to equip and operate the industry as described in the lease or discontinues for a specified time thereafter to so operate it. Leases of a similar character are not infrequent and are held to be valid, as will appear in our discussion of section 183 of our State Constitution, before proceeding to which two cases, because of the sources from which they come, should be considered.
In Citizens’ Loan Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655, 669, 22 L. Ed. 455, the court had under review a state statute authorizing municipalities to issue bonds payable to private individuals or corporations, to encourage them in establishing manufacturing plants within the municipalities issuing the bonds, for the payment of which municipal taxes would have to be levied. The court held that the taxes so levied would be for the benefit of private industry, and therefore not for a public purpose, consequently, the state was without the power to authorize the levy thereof, not because of any specific
In Carothers v. Town of Booneville, 169 Miss. 511, 153 So. 670, the court had under consideration a statute, the only section of which, except the enforcing clause, was as follows: “Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Mississippi, That the Mayor and Board of Aldermen of the Town of Booneville, Mississippi, be and they are hereby empowered and authorized to issue and sell bonds or certificates of credit in the sum of Ten Thousand ($10,000.00) dollars, or so much thereof as may be necessary, for and on behalf of the said Town of Booneville, Mississippi, and to pledge the taxable property of said town, and to make and collect all necessary tax levies to retire the same, the proceeds to be used in
Leases of an analogous character are generally held not to violate constitutional provisions similar to the one here under consideration. 5 McQuillin on Municipal Corporations (2 Ed.), section 2329; Taylor v. Commissioners of Ross County, 23 Ohio St. 22; City of Cincinnati v. Dexter, 55 Ohio St. 93, 44 N. E. 520; Sun Printing & Publishing Association v. New York City, 152 N. Y. 257, 46 N. E. 499, 37 L. R. A. 788; Admiral Realty Co. v. New York City, 206 N. Y. 110, 99 N. E. 241, Ann. Cas. 1914A, 1054; People v. City of Chicago, 349 Ill. 304, 182 N. E. 419; Churchill v. Grants Pass, 70 Or. 283, 141 P. 164. The language of the Supreme Court of Ohio in Taylor v. Commissioners, supra, 23 Ohio St. 22, at page 77, dealing with the lease of a municipally owned railroad, mutatis mutandis, applies here: “It is the road ‘owned’ by the municipality that is authorized to be leased. The public use for which the road was built, is to be preserved, and the power of leasing the right to use and operate it, is designed only as a mode of making such use available to the public. If, under color of this authority, it should be attempted to divert the work from the purposes for which it was authorized, and to subordinate the public to private interests, the attempt would be unwarranted, and the courts would be open to prevent or redress the wrong. . . . The constitution does not forbid the employment of corporations, or individuals, associate or otherwise, as agents to perform public services; nor does it prescribe the mode of their compensation. And if it should be deemed wise and economical to authorize municipalities, who own waterworks, or
Section 258 of the State Constitution. This section provides that “the credit of the state shall not be pledged or loaned in aid of any person, association, or corporation,” etc. If this section should be held to prohibit the state from authorizing its political subdivisions to pledge or loan their credit in aid of persons and private corporations, as to which we express no opinion, its inapplicability here will appear from the preceding discussion of
Section 17 of the State Constitution. This section provides that “private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use, except on due compensation being first made to the owner or owners thereof, in a manner to be prescribed by law.” The section has no application to the state’s taxing power but only to the taking by it of specific property for public use; e. g., under its power of eminent domain. “A tax is not an assessment of benefits. It is . . . a means of distributing the burden of the cost of government. The only benefit to which the taxpayer is constitutionally entitled is that derived from his enjoyment of the privileges of living in an organized society, established and safeguarded by the devotion of taxes to public purposes. See Cincinnati Soap Co. v. United States, supra [301 U. S. 308, 57 S. Ct. 764, 81 L. Ed. 1122]. Any other view would preclude the levying of taxes except as they are used to compensate for the burden on those who pay them, and would involve the abandonment of the most fundamental principle of government—that it exists primarily to provide for the common good.” Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., supra. See, also, Mississippi State Tax Commission v. Flora Drug Co., supra.
Affirmed.
Griffith, J., delivered the opinion specially concurring.
We all agree that, when a challenged statute is susceptible of a construction which will bring it within the Constitution, the duty of the court is to put that construction upon it, and thereupon to sustain it. Looking at the statute, here in question, in the light of that principle, I concur in the result reached that (1) the act is constitutional and (2) that the acquisition, and the proposed lease, of “a hosiery, knitting and wearing apparel manufacturing plant,” is within constitutional allowance, provided the terms of the lease shall vest in the public authorities the ultimate control as regards the employment of the labor in said plant. But in my judgment the opinion as written by the Chief Justice goes too far as respects the grounds upon which the act is sustained, and not far enough in regard to the terms of the proposed lease. For that reason, and also because there is a dissent, it becomes my duty to briefly state my views, matured as a result of an examination of the entire field of the authorities on the subject.
One of the purposes expressed within the act is the alleviation of unemployment. From the earliest times in our history it has been regarded as a public purpose, and within the power of direct taxation, to keep the poor from starvation. Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations (8 Ed.), 1026. Ordinarily, a man will break in and take before he will starve, and all will do this for their families. They will do so singly and in groups. Thus the public duty and purpose to furnish food and necessaries to the famished is traceable directly to the police power of the state. And since in such cases the state, or its authorized subdivisions, may afford direct relief or aid of money or supplies, or both, it may provide work, and if to do so it become necessary to enter within the confines of that which has always heretofore been considered the
But when it is said that, without express constitutional provision to that effect, the field of private enterprise, the domain of the general manufacturing business, may be directly entered as a public purpose because, and because only in so doing, other businesses and other occupations will be incidentally benefited and thereby the public welfare promoted, this, I think, goes too far and has no support in any adjudicated case in this country and is against the fundamentals of a free constitutional system. No authoritative case can be found where this has been allowed, except where the state itself not only owned the facilities but actually managed and operated them,—as was the case, Green v. Frazier, 253 U. S. 233, 40 S. Ct. 499, 64 L. Ed. 878, and as is the case of our penitentiary system of which mention has been made.
In Citizens’ Savings Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655, 665, 22 L. Ed. 455, the court, after saying that aid by taxation to any class of manufactures, not public in their nature, is not a public purpose, went on to observe: “If it be said that a benefit results to the local public of a town by establishing manufactures, the same may be said of any other business or pursuit which employs capital or labor. . . . No line can be drawn in favor of the manufacturer which would not open the coffers of the public treasury to the importunities of two-thirds of the business men of the city or town.” In this brief quotation from our highest court there is pointed out the insuperable difficulty, the insurmountable obstacle, if our constitutional system is to be preserved,
But in the matter of unemployment, and confining the problem to that purpose alone, a tangible line may be drawn. We know from public statistics that the average of unemployment has run throughout several past years at about 10 per cent, of the total population; and because of new inventions, past and future, we can well estimate that the percentage of unemployment, if private employment alone is looked to, will continue throughout the years which are to come, at about or not less than 10 per cent. Up to that percent there is an ascertained and well-defined obligation upon the public in respect to this unemployment problem; and in this connection it is to be noted that the act here in question limits the amount which may be invested in these industrial enterprises at 10 per cent. of the assessed valuation of all the taxable property.
Since the field of industrial enterprise, or the domain of the general manufacturing business, may be entered as a public purpose for the alleviation of unemployment, but for that object only, there comes into operation here, and unavoidably so, the principle that public money raised by taxation for the benefit of the indigent or unemployed must be spent under the direction and control of the public authorities. It cannot be turned over to a private agency to do with it as that agency may please. All the authorities everywhere are to that effect. It
Unless the lease carry the necessary provisions in respect to employment as indicated in the foregoing paragraph, the only other constitutional method by which the property could be leased would be at its full, fair market rental value after an honest and deliberate effort to obtain such value, for there nothing of monetary value would be donated to the lessee. But, if the lease be at a reduced rate or price as compared with the fair market value, and do not carry the provisions for ultimate control of the employment features as above mentioned, there would be a donation or gratuity pro tanto in manifest conflict with
The opinion in chief does not commit the judges, who speak thereby, upon this question of the essential outlines of the proposed lease. It says that it will be presumed that the municipal officers and the commission will take care that the provisions of the lease will meet the requirements of the statute. What they must do is to see that those provisions will meet the requirements of the Constitution. It is true, as a general rule, that in passing upon the constitutionality of a statute courts will not by anticipation decide upon the details of an additional step proposed to be taken but not yet
DISSENTING OPINION.
Anderson, J., delivered a dissenting opinion.
In my judgment the majority opinion drives a steam shovel through our Constitution, not only sections 183 and 258 but others to be referred to. It holds that a municipality may either own and operate a garment factory or own and lease it to a private person, association of persons, or a corporation, provided it retains and exercises supervision and control over its operation, which, of course, carries with it the necessary power to fix the wages and hours of labor of the employees. To that extent the right to contract is destroyed. We all agree that ownership and lease by a municipality without supervision and control would violate due process, in that it would result in taxation in aid of a private enterprise and not for a public purpose.
Can the Legislature make a public utility out of a private business? The court knows, as everybody knows,
The logic of the majority opinion leads to this: The Legislature, if it found necessary to relieve the unemployment, could authorize a municipality to take over, under the power of eminent domain, all property and all business of every kind within its corporate limits, and to manage and operate it as a public utility. And, of course, what the state could authorize municipalities to do, it could do itself. In other words, the state could take over all property and business of every kind within its boundaries and manage and control it as a public utility. That would indeed be giving Soviet Russia an approving handshake. Mississippi would be safe not for democracy but for communism. The valuable rights of contract and of private ownership of property would be gone. We would have a commonwealth of serfs instead of freemen—parasites instead of patriots. There would be no such thing as taxation for public purposes, for neither the municipalities nor the state could tax their own property.
Going now to sections 183 and 258 of the Constitution:
Hinds & Adams Counties v. Natchez, Jackson & Columbus R. Co., 85 Miss. 599, 38 So. 189, 107 Am. St. Rep. 305, throws light on what those two sections of the Constitution mean. In the 1870’s and 1880’s Adams County, Hinds County, and the City of Natchez owned the majority of the stock of the Natchez, Jackson & Columbus Railroad Company and had a majority of the directors of the corporation. The aggregate of their stock was something over $700,000. In several other counties and municipalities of the state like conditions existed. Of course, these railroads were public utilities, and they were, in part at least, under the supervision and control of the public authorities, nevertheless, the result was heavy financial burdens to the counties and municipalities involved, from which they received little, if any, benefit. Some of them are yet levying taxes to meet those railroad ventures. These sections of the Constitution were intended to prevent, among other things, a repetition of that history.
Under the statute here involved, a lease with supervision and control by the municipality would be giving aid to the lessee, even though he paid value therefor, for it is manifest that the lessee would build his own plant if he were able and thought it more profitable to own
The majority opinion cites as a precedent the state convict system, which provides for the working of convicts on a farm owned by the state, in competition with the farming interests generally. That is not a precedent, it is expressly authorized by
Furthermore, it is a matter of common knowledge that industrial plants like the one here involved are owned and operated by corporations, not individuals or partnerships.